


I Don't Know What You're Talking About

by writingaddictsanonymous



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Cora smokes some weed that's about it, Dead Claudia Stilinski, Dead Victoria Argent, Derek's family is dead, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Jackson is adopted, Kate doesn't exist, M/M, There's no actual romance here?, This is mostly just Scott and Derek, Underage Drug Use, grieving!Hale family, it's just friendship - Freeform, the fire was probably an accident, unless you're into that, which is fine too, yeah this is not romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-16 07:32:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4616700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingaddictsanonymous/pseuds/writingaddictsanonymous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Hale family dies in a fire and the pack finds out just how strong Derek can be, whether he actually is or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Don't Know What You're Talking About

 

Derek’s been friends with Scott almost as long as Stiles has. Although Scott and Stiles became friends when they were somewhere around five (no one knows when they actually met, because the boys only remember the situation, not their ages), Derek and Scott met when they were nine, and he was quickly absorbed into his and Stiles’ friendship. Derek always had trouble making friends, and eventually, he and Isaac became friends and he came into the group, too. By their sophomore year of high school, there’s a whole bunch of them-- Stiles, Scott, and Derek; Isaac, Erica, and Boyd; Jackson and Danny; and Allison and Lydia.

Derek knows that he’s by far the least liked of all of them. His social ineptitude never really resolved itself, and it makes it weird sometimes. The others are outgoing and loud, and Derek knows they sometimes get annoyed with him. Jackson made a comment once that he was weak, and at the time, Derek had laughed it off. 

He thinks about it a lot, though, about how he’d said that and Danny’d agreed. But it’s not until his family’s house goes up in flames before his eyes, the fifth week of junior year, that everything about their friendships changes. 

When Stiles' mom had died, he'd screamed and cried and withdrawn like any child would. He had clung to his father, to Scott and the others, and hadn't spoken for a while. When Jackson found out he was adopted, and why, he'd thrown things and punched walls and gone absolutely insane on the lacrosse field. After Allison's mother killed herself, she'd locked herself in her bedroom for a week. 

They all grieve differently, of course; they're human. But when Derek's family is pronounced dead and he and his sisters move into an apartment on the other side of town, he doesn't change in front of his friends. He goes on, smiling and laughing and not interacting with anyone but his own group of friends, just like usual. They don't talk about it much; everyone had gone to the funeral and wake and offered their condolences and comfort. But now, with Derek's 'I'm just fine' attitude and his apparent lack of grieving process, they just move on. Allison sits next to him a lot, and even if he pretends he doesn't notice, he sees how they all look at him. Even Jackson hugs him tighter when they part ways now. Isaac brings them cookies and things like that a lot. 

Stiles gets status reports from his dad, who checks in on the Hale kids and makes sure they're seeing their respective therapists consistently. They are, and Stiles isn't surprised. He reports this to his friends-- they call themselves 'the pack'-- and they don't tell Derek what they know. Because they all know how broken up he is, they realize how strong he is, keeping up the front of content stability as his world falls down around him. 

Sometimes, Derek feels like he's drowning. Drowning in grief, responsibility, schoolwork. His teachers are lenient with him, but he's taking AP classes and he needs to go to college, even if they could live off of the life insurance and their inheritances for the rest of their lives. 

None of his friends know about the money until Melissa mentions it to Scott and Isaac over dinner one night. She shuts up quickly when she realizes the boys don't know what inheritance she's talking about. 

Scott's the first one to bring any of it up to Derek. They're sitting on the grass in a field that's far off the beaten path in the woods, leaning against the side of Derek's car as they eat the turkey sandwiches Melissa sent Scott out with. 

"You don't have to keep going like this, you know," he says quietly, glancing up at his friend with a slight frown. 

"I don't know what you're talking about." 

His voice is curt, and for a moment, Scott almost lets it go. Derek doesn't want to talk about it, and he doesn't have to. 

And what Scott doesn't know won't hurt him. He doesn't have to know about the amount of weed Cora's been smoking-- and she's only fifteen, and Derek and Laura feel like they've failed her-- or the holes Derek's left in the walls of his bedroom. He doesn't need to know about what he and his therapist talk about, or the dream journal she makes him keep. Scott doesn't need to know about the night terrors that wake them all every night, or how they're struggling to get up in the morning at the thought of facing every day. 

"I want you to talk to me." 

He doesn't need to know that Derek cries himself to sleep every night, or that he got so frustrated chopping vegetables for dinner that he almost cut off his finger by accident. He doesn't need to know just how hard Derek tries to be strong for his sisters, or that most of his therapy sessions are spent in tears, curled in on himself and sobbing out what he can. 

"Talk about what?" Derek asks mildly, taking another bite of his sandwich. 

 "You know what," Scott says gently. He doesn't want to spook Derek by just saying it outright. He wants Derek to talk about whatever he's comfortable with, but Derek just shakes his head, giving a quiet little sigh. 

"I don't know why you would want to talk about that," he says as he finishes the sandwich. "There's nothing to talk about." 

Scott can see him getting ready to get up, and he plasters a hand over his chest-- and Jesus Christ, when did he get so broad?

"Stop it," he says, curling his fingers lightly into Derek's shirt. "Come on. I know you're struggling with this, Derek, and I don't want you to keep hiding from me." 

"I'm not--" 

 "You are, okay, and I hate it. You don't have to be all strong and stoic with me. You want to put up a wall for the others, fine, but I'm your oldest friend and I'm here for you, man."

 The sigh Derek lets out is a concession in and of itself, and he drops his head back against the cool black metal of the Camaro, eyes closing. 

 "I wouldn't even know where to begin." 

 So he doesn't. With Scott's encouragement and gentle arm around his shoulders, Derek tells him everything: how he could smell their house and their family burning as he watched helplessly, unable to get close enough to help. His relief when Laura and Cora turned out to be only minorly burned. The way the Sheriff had done his best to hold them all as they screamed and cried on the singed grass just outside of the house. The time it took to wrestle Laura into anything other than a bathrobe for the wake and funeral. Even just shopping for clothes afterward. Melissa and John finding them a two-bedroom apartment to rent as far from the house as possible while still keeping them in Beacon Hills. 

 The fact that Melissa had brought them dinner for two weeks to make sure that they all ate something, even if it was only that. The twelve pounds Cora lost in a goddamn _week_. How hard it was for her to gain them back, but that she'd finally done it. The exhausting nature of his therapy sessions; Laura's near-black under eye circles, and the night terrors. The waking flashbacks that he worries will overcome him in public. 

 He tells Scott that his bedroom walls are nearly nonexistent now because he punched through most of them. The fact that the only mirror in the apartment is a small one in the bathroom, partly because none of them want to see themselves and partly because Derek punched those out, too. After the first one, Laura had put away the one that had survived the fire. 

All of their salvaged family photos are boxed away or turned down to face whatever surface they sit on. Laura's hands shake when she tries to put makeup on, so she stopped. Cora threw her phone down a staircase when a kid from school asked what her family did to 'deserve' burning alive, and Derek came close to murdering the little punk. 

Through everything, Scott holds him, even when he breaks down and cries against his best friend, wrapped in his arms and shaking violently. Scott shushes him gently, strokes his fingers soothingly through his hair and whispers gentle nonsense into his ear as Derek sobs out how much he loves his mom and the siblings he lost, how he wishes he could have his family back because anything with them would be better than the darkness he's in all of the time.

 By the time Derek runs out of words, the shoulder of Scott's shirt is soaked through and the November sun is sinking behind the trees. When Derek drops Scott off, they're both hesitant to separate for the night. 

 "Mom wants you all to come over for Thanksgiving. Stiles and his dad-- and Allison and her dad-- will be there, too. And she wants to know you guys will be fed and okay, I guess." 

 "I'll talk to my sisters," Derek answers, offering a weak smile. Scott's surprised when Derek pulls him into a gentle hug, face tucked into the crook of his neck. Neither of them notice Melissa and the Sheriff, who are watching with soft eyes from the porch. 

Melissa holds Scott tight that night, and the Sheriff does the same with Stiles. Derek lets his sisters see him cry for the first time in weeks as they hold one another close on Laura's bed. 

Scott and Melissa fall asleep on the couch; Stiles appears in his dad's doorway at midnight to ask to sleep in his bed, like he had so many times as a child. The Hales fall asleep with Derek's back to the wall, Laura and Cora's heads on his chest and arms around each other.

**Author's Note:**

> As with everything I've posted up to this point, larryberry2 is the only reason I'm here and the person you have to thank for the mess that is my writings.


End file.
